Technical question for BarryK and the Puppy developers: why is Puppy's hardware support so good compared to other distro's? I have, for example, Kubuntu running on one of my PC's but the distro is unable to shut down the computer through ACPI, I have to shut it down by hand (there's a power switch on it, a feature most other PC's don't have anymore). Puppy, however, is able to shut the PC down no problemo. I've also heard that Puppy is able to get more graphics cards working properly.

What makes Puppy different in this respect? Why is it that distro's differ from each other in hardware support? Is it startup scripts? Or different capabillities turned on in the kernel?

Even discursive reading of the Forum will show you that plenty of folk have both shutdown and video issue with Puppy!
Shutdown may sometimes be effective by inserting an acpi statement or adjusting the BIOS, but not always; seems to be HW dependent. As for XOrg issues, these are an ongoing issue for many distros, certainly including Puppy.